I went to a small primary school. It was so small that when I started the 5-7 year olds were all in one class.
I had no older siblings to learn from, so this age gap resulted in some “educational” moments for me—the young kid.
I’ll always be grateful that my parents taught me the basics of reading and phonetics before I started school, but they never prepared me for Joel.
One morning, I arrived early and found one of the ‘Big 7-Year-Olds’ with a comic book.
He was silent. Dead silent. Not even a peep.
I walked over to him and said, “Hey Joel, what are you doing?”
“Mmh, reading,” he replied.
“How?” I asked.
“With my eyes,” he said.
“How are you reading when you’re not saying the words?” I managed to utter, even though I knew he was getting frustrated.
He looked at me with a blank stare and said, “I’m reading silently. I just hear the words in my mind.”
I remember running to the bookshelf, picking up the first book, and opening it up to find that I, too, could read silently.
I’d read so many books with my parents before bed, but we’d always say the words out loud. Joel taught me otherwise. He helped me discover silence.
And that, folks, is my first recollection of being mindblown.